I don’t know if any of you current posters were around for that, but if so, I just can’t understand how you can call yourselves Yankee fans. Pathetic quitters is what you sounded like. Of the lame posts I could stand to read, the only person who had any confidence in the Yankees at that point was a (yeesh) Red Sox fan.Jeter is King

Quite the attitude you have SG.
Maybe you should shitcan this blog and join Steve at WasWatching?
Or follow some other stupid team that has made the PS 15 of the last 17 years.
Jeez… and some people think Yankee fans are entitled.OldYanksFan

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Thursday, June 2, 2011

A Brief Foray into Run Differentials and Component Stats

At this point in the season, the Yankees have the second best winning percentage in the AL.

Team

a%

CLE

.623

NYY

.574

BOS

.536

TEX

.536

DET

.527

TBR

.527

SEA

.509

LAA

.500

TOR

.500

OAK

.474

CHW

.466

BAL

.463

KCR

.455

MIN

.315

Over a full season at the actual winning percentage the Yankees would be about a 93 win team, with Cleveland at 101.

Now of course over 1/3 of a season actual winning percentage can be misleading since teams might be winning or losing more games than their actual performance merits. So you can look at something like Pythagenpat to get a better sense of how well a team has played so far and what it might mean going forward.

Team

p%

NYY

.629

CLE

.582

TEX

.563

TBR

.543

TOR

.542

BOS

.540

LAA

.506

OAK

.496

DET

.486

CHW

.480

SEA

.478

KCR

.462

BAL

.422

MIN

.322

If you do that, the Yankees look more like a 102 win team, which would be eight wins better than Cleveland and 11 wins better than Boston.

Although Pythagenpat does a pretty good job of estimating a team’s level of play, their actual runs scored and runs allowed might be skewed due to better or worse than expected performances in high leverage situations that are not necessarily repeatable going forward.

You can use linear weights batting runs to account for that. What’s nice about doing that is you can put offense and pitching/defense on the same scale if you use all the same components.

Team

b%

NYY

.599

TEX

.568

BOS

.562

CLE

.559

TOR

.533

TBR

.526

OAK

.526

LAA

.524

DET

.504

CHW

.479

SEA

.469

KCR

.435

BAL

.423

MIN

.343

This method also shows that the Yankees have played better than any other team in the AL, and would have them at around 97 wins, five wins ahead of Cleveland and six games ahead of Boston.

We do need to be cognizant that how a team has played so far only tells us so much about how good they are now and how good they’ll be going forward. Regression towards the mean, injuries/roster changes and a whole host of other things are going to have an impact on how a team does moving forward.

But at least as of right now, the Yankees have probably been the best team in the league and the difference isn’t trivial.